


thy palace, Full of solace

by leedeeloo



Category: TWRP | Tupper Ware Remix Party (Band)
Genre: Dream Sequence, Gen, Introspection, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 08:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17546381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leedeeloo/pseuds/leedeeloo
Summary: Phobos is a great and terrible packrat, and he has a dream where that isn't so. Meouch is also there.





	thy palace, Full of solace

**Author's Note:**

> title is a quote from a john skelton poem, upon a deedmans hed. i'm evolving to my final form and instead of single word titles or song lyrics, ill be using 16th century poetry for titles from now on /mostlykidding  
> also thank you thank you thank you to lula for editing that beginning dream sequence for me.

Phobos always woke up in his dreams. They would start in his bed, and the strangeness would pile on exponentially from there. His hands would move against the bed, like trying to grip water, head swaying against a pillow that wasn't there. This was normal; getting up, feet on the ground, knowing already that this was a dream, simply time to see what would happen. Somehow his body was swaying, but still, normal for dreams.

It was like a fish eye focus, just realizing things are happening around him, a sort of slow motion. There was always a film of darkness around his dreams.

The calmness dissipates with his realization. His room was as bare as the day they’d moved in.

The bed was a naked mattress, the nightstand, dresser, all new and clean, surely empty. No desk yet. No bookshelf. It made him panic, made him look around the room, shake his head, and wake up with a start. A sudden gasping breath, sitting up with a scramble. 

He turned, almost laying on his side, to look at the clocks on his nightstand; a digital radio alarm, with an old fashioned analog alarm clock balanced on top, ringing bells not so shiny in the dark of his room. Both read 5:16, the digital one indicating PM.

Looks like he’d be getting up early today.

The nightstand was covered with a stack of books, a dish of rings he rarely wore, hair elastics, guitar picks he also didn’t use, all manner of trinkets he’d picked up on tour, all small enough to be keychains. Phobos sat up, leaned over the furniture, and rummaged over every single thing on the surface; he had to make sure it was all really  _ there _ . His fingers fell on an old lighter; black, plastic, long since dead and swiped from Meouch before he could throw it out. Once he was satisfied this was real, all his things still existed, he stood, stretching up tall, then down to touch his toes. 

He padded across the room slowly, cautiously, still not convinced the room wouldn’t warp and turn, and he’d wake up in an empty room again. 

In the closet, and he dragged his hand across everything hanging in there, flipped past every folded garment in the side shelf, before finally pulling something on; soft, cotton, he wasn’t really looking, wasn’t really getting dressed for the day, this was just to stay warm.

A deep breath.

It was fine now, he assured himself. This was real, this was his life, everything was here, no one had taken his things, it was all as it should be. Still, he thought as he wrung his hands together. Still, it had been a while since he’d taken inventory. That’s what he kept it all for.

The closet got it first. Technically. He dragged his desk chair over, thinking about where they got it from (garage sale) and how he’d replaced the back of it, the cushion, and had the old bits in a plastic tub in the basement, with other things of the same caliber. Standing on the chair, and going through the shelf at the top of the closet. Dark, deeper and higher than he ever anticipated, light in his skin making enough of a dent. Dusty, too, making him hold his breath as he pulled out a folded shirt, little cedar disks in the creases to repel moths. He brought the shirt to his face, breathing normally, not sniffing, trying not to huff dust. He put it back soon enough, leaving it as the only thing up there.

The desk was a black hole of time and things, drawers stuffed to over filling, modified to over extend out of their places, so he could see inside the whole thing at once, back of the drawer flush with the outside. He sat down at it, going over all the trinkets strewn across his workspace before even thinking about the drawers, which he planned to go over from the bottom up.

It was all things he liked to fidget with, things he honestly used. A jar of guitar picks. A mug of pens and pencils. Little notepads flipped open, covered in sticky notes of varying sizes and colours. There was an old laptop shoved in the corner, in the back, the mug and jar balanced on it. It was long dead, everything possible taken off it, salvaged, but here it stayed. He left the parts in, they were of no use to him. 

The drawers held similar things, more defunct electronics, most of them Earthen. A broken can opener he told Sung he’d throw away. Headphones, wires yanked out, cushions ripped off, one pair still plugged into an ancient mp3 player. Everything on it scrawled on a note in his tall thin printing, taped on the back. He kept everyone’s old phones, old chargers, even Sung’s. The case of one of Havve’s kept popping off, the jostling of the drawer opening enough to urge it off and the battery out, which Phobos popped back in, put it all back together, knowing it was futile. 

He let out a sigh once he felt he was done with that. 

Up again, and to his bookshelf. Shelves. One was full size, taller than he was, and packed full with trinkets galore in front of the books. The other one was half the size, in much the same condition. He’d need another one soon, would prefer another short one to just stack on top of the other, because a second tall one would render the short one unnecessary, but, just like everything on it, he couldn’t bear to be rid of it.

The books on the bottom shelf were on their sides, titles stacking up like a staircase. Phobos crouched down, ran his finger up and down the spines, sideways and catching dust jackets as he mouthed out the titles, author names. There was a pile between the two shelves just like this, kicked over and re-stacked about once a day.

The books were arranged in an order that was only comprehensible to him. It was an ordering system he couldn’t describe, couldn’t explain, but he could do it with his eyes shut and a hand tied behind his back. Whatever the logic of it was, it landed a specific section of books to the shelf perfectly at his eye level. 

Books from home.

He touched the well worn spines, cracks and bends worked in. It was the only shelf with some leeway, and he plucked one of the books off with ease. A thin cardstock cover, but not. Just the closest words for what it was. Paperback, if he had to categorize it. 

Flipping open the pages, the margins were filled with his writing, his notes, his shorthand detailing long anecdotes, then numbers and symbols, corresponding to pages in notebooks, also stored on this shelf. The books themselves were fairly varied topics; all reference manuals on how to provide basic first aid, start a fire, how to tell if it was safe to go back underground, what plants to forage, what could survive above ground. Field manuals. His notes, his markings, were all the same topic.

The language.

Phobos placed the book back, took down a notebook. The cover was labeled, nervous pen strokes, the date range and what book he was taking notes on. That old language, that old system, trying to keep it fresh in his mind. Some of these earlier notes he squinted at. Sentences copied out of the book, labelling parts of them, the word types, the roots, trying to recall as much as he could on his own. The date on the front always gave him a pang of regret; it wasn’t from right when he left, it was just after they got to Earth. What more could he have remembered if he’d started earlier? What bits fell away in the panic, in the rush?

A flick through the pages, and he started earnestly reading it. Practicing the letters, reciting grammar rules, knowing that the later notebooks were filled with translations of English words, trying to keep his memory strong, clinging onto a language as it fell away.

There were artifacts of this all over his room. The notepads on his desk, little scribbles of his thoughts translated this way and that. There were two calendars hanging over his desk; one bought, Earthen and the other hand made by him, numbers and dates and months from back home, conversions from there to Earth written on it so he could keep track. 

He was looking over his shoulder at the calendars, when a knock on his door pulled him out of his thoughts with a startle. 

The notebook stayed in his hand as he went to the door, opening it. Meouch was on the other side, giving a greeting nod.

“Thought I heard you rooting around! I was gonna start cookin’, an’--” he cut himself off, eyes falling on the notebook. “What’s that?”

Phobos looked down, held it up, and shrugged. He handed it to Meouch so he could sign a response. “I dreamed my stuff was gone, it freaked me out, so I’m taking inventory.”

Meouch nodded, eyebrows raising, opening up the notebook. He always looked down at things he read, trying to hide the way he squinted. Phobos and Sung were sure Meouch needed glasses, but he hadn’t said anything about it yet, so they’d rather let him struggle with it than hurt his pride.

There was the way Meouch’s face screwed up, just slightly, when he realized he couldn’t read a word of it. He flipped through the pages faster, a hurried gentleness, trying not to rip the thin pages.

“Yeah,” Meouch mumbled, still looking at the pages as if he’d suddenly gain clarity, “can’t imagine you having to leave behind your little nest all over again.”

That made Phobos’ eyes go wide, a grin spread across his face. He plucked his journal out of Meouch’s hands, turned to put it back where it belonged, head shaking on the way.

_ I wasn’t always like this, _ he said right into Meouch’s head. His hands shook as he nudged books apart, put his notes back where they belonged.  _ I didn’t always need to keep everything. _

Meouch followed, the soft scuff of his slippers. Phobos couldn’t help but to continue, eyes scanning over the titles on the shelf.

_ If I had to pick a word, I was a minimalist back home. I only kept the essentials in my quarters. All the heirlooms, ornaments, things that got passed down, I had them but they weren’t mine, you know? I didn’t have any real connection to that. _ He fought the urge to shrug again, to brush this off. It had been a long time since he’d even thought about this, thought about home.  _ I always let Sung think I didn’t have time to get any belongings before he found me, but that’s not true. I just didn’t have anything I thought was worth taking. _ He brought his hand up, placed his fingers on the shelf. 

When he let out a sigh, it was met with a hand on his back. Warm, gentle, not pressing. 

Still facing away, Phobos mentioned one last thing.  _ That’s why I keep anything I can get my hands on. I’m making up for not. _

With that, Phobos spun around, that grin back on his face, a little forced, a bit of a tremble. He reached out, imitating the same gesture as Meouch, grabbed his arm. A squeeze, a tilt of his head.

_ I could go for some breakfast for dinner. _

**Author's Note:**

> thank u.  
> tell me what u thought! my tumblr url rn is officiallordphobos, so u can send ur feedback there if u dont wanna do it here!  
> did u miss phobos love hours? i know i did.


End file.
